Pupil Premium

The Government introduced the term ‘Pupil Premium’ to encompass all pupils who are either In Care, in receipt of Free School Meals (FSM) or whose parents are actively serving in the Armed Forces.

As a group nationally, children who have been eligible for FSM at any point in time have consistently lower educational attainment than those who have never been eligible for FSM. These pupils therefore should benefit from the additional support the Pupil Premium funding will be able to provide.

We aim to close any gap in attainment and achievement between those receiving the Pupil Premium Grant and their non-Pupil Premium peers. Pupils identified as being in the Pupil Premium cohort will benefit from additional academic support, enrichment activities and other targeted resources to ensure that they have a positive and successful learning experience.

Pupil Premium 2016/2017

The Pupil Premium is additional funding given to schools and academies to provide additional support for children from low-income families who were eligible for free school meals, looked after children and those from families with parents in the Armed Forces. These children have, historically, made slower progress than their peers and the Pupil Premium Funding is given to help narrow this gap.

For 2016/17, the amount of Pupil Premium Funding stands at:

Pupil Premium

It is for schools and academies to decide how the Pupil Premium, allocated to schools per FSM pupil, is spent, since they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for the individual pupils within their responsibility.

TA support for every class: Teaching Assistants (TAs) are valuable support in the classroom to improve the learning and progress of the children. We are using a proportion of the Pupil Premium money to allow every class to have a TA for the whole day.

Reading Support: Reading is a vital skill and we are using some Pupil Premium funding to provide extra support for those children who are behind their peers. This will be used to run programs such as Rapid Reading, Toe-by-Toe and Dancing Bears.

Accelerated Reader: Accelerated Reader is a fully interactive online reading tool that provides careful monitoring and assessment of student reading skills in the areas of decoding, comprehension and inference. We have purchased this for the whole academy.

Attendance Support: In order for children to learn, they must first be in the classroom. We have allocated some of our Pupil Premium funding to allow us to support families who find it difficult to get their children into the academy on time each day. We use our minibus to collect some of our Pupil Premium students every morning.

Academy Clubs: We are using some Pupil Premium funding to run clubs both before the academy starts (Head Start Club) and after the hours of the academy day (Homework Club). These give children the opportunity to learn outside of their normal lesson times.

Communication book: Pupil premium funding is used to purchase resources for each child to have a communication book so that messages can be easily communicated between home and school to help identify support for children so they feel more emotionally secure.

Identification tools: Pupil Premium funding has been allocated for specialist assessment tools, including the Progression Tools from the Communication Trust. This will ensure the early identification of children with language delay to enable swift interventions are put into place.

Speech and Language: Some of the Pupil Premium has been allocated to buy in the service of an experienced speech and language therapist to work with Pupil Premium children.

After-Academy Tutoring: Some of the Pupil Premium has been allocated to allow some children to receive tutoring, allowing them to make accelerated progress.

Vivo rewards: Some of the Pupil Premium has continued to be allocated to fund this highly effective behavioural reward system. Children and their families are always keen to know how many Vivo points they have received.

Pastoral Support/Nurture:

Pupil Premium money has been used to fund social and emotional support for children. This has included Thrive Training, Nurture Group training, Lego Therapy training, the development of of a specialised room for nurture work and commissioning Play Therapy for selected pupils. Through addressing a child’s emotional needs they are more able to engage in learning and make progress.

Monitoring progress and attainment: Pupil premium funding is used to track progress and attainment (social as well as academic) by purchasing holistic school online trackers

We will analyse and review the impact of these measures to ensure they represent both value for money and have played a direct role in improving the achievement of students of all abilities. Our tracking and monitoring systems are designed to ensure that all students achieve their potential and we place a particular focus on tracking the progress of our disadvantaged students.

Some indicators of the progress of pupils who received the Pupil Premium Grant in 2015-16 are:

Pupil Premium Grant - 2015/16

Attendance Support: In order for children to learn, they must first be in the classroom. We have allocated some of our Pupil Premium funding to allow us to support families who find it difficult to get their children into the academy on time each day. It also allows us to identify potential problems sooner and thus find solutions more quickly.

Impact:

The attendance for the academy reached its highest level for at least 5 years. At the end of the year, it stood at 95.1% for those children attending the academy. This was an increase from 93.0% in 2014/15. We were able to focus our attention on those who were persistently absent.

Impact

Academy Clubs: We are using some Pupil Premium funding to run clubs both before the academy starts (Head Start Club) and after the hours of the academy day (Homework Club). These give children the opportunity to learn outside of their normal lesson times.